The War on Terror

So here I am in the office on a Saturday afternoon. I started to come into the office on the weekends (last week I spent about 4 hours over two days) not because I have a flood of clients but rather because I am feeling guilty for not making more forward progress on the practice. Where does the time go? That is my constant refrain that has me coming into the office more frequently.

So here I am blogging on a Saturday, did I need to come into the office just for this? The answer is no, but now that I am here alone in the office I am feeling a little blue, a little depressed and I find typing out posts to be good for my mental so I thought I would bang out a post or two.

So let me share with my very few readers some recent thoughts on talking with other solos. Before I opened this office, I talked with several solos about their experiences and now, after making the leap, I have continued to network with other solos, have read the solosez email list and similar regional lists, gone out to dinner with some. So what lessons have I learned? Here are a few:

Two years. One of the few (and perhaps only) constant themes I have heard over and over is that it take about two years to get the practice going. One solo said that on average the solos that came through his law school to share their war stories made about $15K their first year. I have another friend who did about $30K his first year and then is on track to do about $85K this years (that’s gross). Over and over again, I heard 2 years although sometimes it was 1.5. years to 2 years, or if you can get to the two year mark you are going to make it. So for those of you that are doing some financial planning to make the solo path work, I would try and lay out a two year runway.

There are successes, strugglers and failures. I wish I could identify some best practices but the truth is that everyone seemed to have a little bit of a different story. Some focused on one area, slowly built up the practice and are now a success. Others appear to be struggling and unhappy. Other still have the emotional terror, panic attacks some five or more years into their practice. I guess what I take away from this is that you are not going to find the answer to the question: can I make it as a solo from talking to other solos. Without too much trouble, you can find examples of very happy successful solos out their and struggling grumpy solos, but you will not be able to find the answer to the question of which camp you will fall into.

Marketing Wizards . . .Not. I was very surprised at just how bad the quality of Internet marketing was among these solo lawyers. Most did not have web sites, and those that did they tended to be rather amateurish. Not sure what to make of this. Perhaps it’s a good thing that they don’t seem to need to spend a ton of time on things like web sites (I know that is the case in some situations, they have too busy a practice to worry about the colors, logo and font on their web sites). It also seemed to create an opportunity to set yourself apart from the others who are doing web marketing.

There is more out there than Internet solos. There is a lot more to the profession out there than the people who participate on Solosez and other Internet lists. As I noted above, lots of solos do not even have a web presence (I tried to find the web site of a solo that Myshingle.com who successfully argued a case before the US Supremem Court and guess what? He didn’t have one or at least it I couldn’t find it). I guess what I am trying to say is not to form your impressions or limit your networking to Internet listservs. There is a ton of talent out there that has never heard of myshingle.com etc.

Find a pathfinder solo. When I am feeling down, dejected, depressed . . when self doubt is taking hold, when my chest is tightening, when I wake up at 3 in the morning thinking what the hell am I doing? When I dread the question from friends an neighbors . . “how’s the practice going? Do you have any clients?” . . One of the things I think about is a solo friend who just like me, picked up a law book, read it, taught himself an area of the law, found a mentor, took some CLE classes, advertised, got his first client, got a second client, a third and a fourth. Now two years into it, is he a success? Not yet. He hasn’t crossed that threshold just yet, but he is damn close . . damn close. If I can get to where he is in two years, I know this will work. I guess, where I am at is the old saying . . if he can do it . . why the hell can’t I?

So there are some thoughts for a Saturday afternoon, and you know what? some of the dark mental clouds have lifted for now. I am going to go and work on my health care proxy form and then go home to my wife and kids.
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